To edit the url of a post or page using WordPress.com click Edit to get to the post or page editor. Then click the Post Slug + where you’ll see the full url of the post. Correct the typo and click Save.

If your page has been already indexed by google it may make more sense to just leave it to avoid 404 errors.

linkage: via jalaj.net

This is just a test post trying to show the people who are having difficulties with getting their YouTube embedded videos to show up, that their code is ok.

[ youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eb9zL9Ft-E]

Whoa I now have a soccer video on my blog. Strange. Kinda makes me cringe a bit. Nice goal and everything, but whats with the self adulation? Get a grip. All you did was header a ball into a net.

[ youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zqg-AdiKVk]

This one I couldn’t even watch the whole way through and I like manga. That soundtrack is so fucking cheesy. Why the hell would you want this on your blog anyway?

linkage: FAQ howTo post a YouTube video in WordPress

Here are some instructions to show you how to create an RSS news feed on any search string. It is pretty simple to do and great if you have special interests, but no good portal site to do the combining for you.

Simply copy this string:

http://news.google.com/news?q=global%20peace&output=rss

and replace the global%20peace with the search stirng of your choice. For every space add %20

You can see mine in the menu  to the right (well you could in October 2006)
Thats it. You can go home now.

If you wanted it on your site in WordPress your theme would have to be able to display Sidebar Widgets so that you can add an RSS box.

From your Dashboard, click the Presentation tab. then the Sidebar Widget tab below.

Drag a new RSS Widget box from the Available Widgets panel to the Sidebar panel on the left. Drop it in the position that you want the news feeds to be in.

You may have to use the selection boxes below to increase the number of available RSS widgets if you have none showing in the Available Widgets panel.

Once the ESS Widget is in the correct place in the menu, click the little edit box to the right of the RSS widget.  This will pop up the RSS widget with text fields for you to enter in the RSS details as below.

Set the Items to a respectable number

Click the top cross X to close the window (don’t worry it saves your changes)

Back on the main screen don’t forget to click the Save Changes button at the top right

Click the View Site link at the top of your page and check out your handy work

You can see mine in the menu  to the right (well you could in October 2006)

Carrying on the theme of data visualisation, I followed the path and came across a remarkable program by Jonathan Harris and Sepandar Kamvar that collects and then displays the current feelings of people around the world.

It sounds a bit strange but what they do is look for the words “I feel” and “I am feeling” aggregated from among blog posts across the world. When they get a match they collect the whole sentence and drag it into their software and show it graphically. Amazingly clever stuff.

linkage: mapping the feelings of the world

I don’t know if you have really noticed it but l have seen web sites using font size for an instantly recogniabsle ranking system for popularity. The more popular the tag is, the larger it’s font.

I thought it was pretty clever way of transmitting a whole layer of metatext.

linkage: have a look here on wikipedia and here on flickr for some worknig tags

Test from the Google owned online collaborative word processor, Writely. If this works it could prove to be incredibly useful.

Well it didn’t turn up when I posted it earlier in the day, but when I look five hours later it is there. I don’t know if it is just lag, or whether it will always be slow to become visible.

It certainly looks like this could be a useful additional way to blog for sure. The editor is a lot nicer than the one built into wordpress.com, although there is nothing inherently bad about their one. Writely has some more features for sure, and if the collaborative writing is any good then this it will probably become an essential tool for blogging.

I’ll have a bit more of a play and pass on anything I learn.

updates after the jump

Update: So this is posted and shows up in the WordPress post manager, at the time I posted it from Writely, I can view the page, and edit and re-publish it from there no problems. Except that it still isn’t displaying on the page. Maybe it is something like a post from the future? Some sort of time zone issue perhaps? Stay tuned (as if you cared ;)

Update Two: Well I set the dat on the post to yesterday, then back to today and now they show. Something still al little screwy. I was going to put a post on Google forums but as IBLocked cookies I can’t log in, and therefore can’t post a question.

linkage: writely

So I saw over on psytractor a post directing me to see this clip, but to see it I need to have a MySpace account.
The problem is I don’t have a my space account. I haven’t gone close. I sort of accidently visited once but after I saw that they were the busiest site on the internet I decided to keep my distance. Heh I must be getting old. I figured it was all just a dating service.

Am I missing anything? Or should I just sign up already? Who are they? What do they do? Are they really the busiest site on the internet?

stay tuned

Update: I had a quick look at their site but page two of the tour appears to be broken so there goes the check out MySpace plan. Still just from looking at the front page it seems to be all about meeting friends. Great then there would be another way I have for not keeping in touch with people.

linkage: do I need a MySpace account?

I have been having a look into more things that it is possible to do with WordPress.com once you are past the basics of writing a few posts and making some pages.

First off today was changing the sidebar so that just the main Pages links showed without all the sub pages being visible as well. Unfortunately it wasn’t a clickable solution – it was either show them all or none via the widgets. Not quite what I was looking for.

The trick to getting it to look like it does now is to add a text label, called Pages. Add in the html code in the text field (i.e. view source on the site if you want it to look like the existing) and delete the unwanted sub-pages from the html list. Not so tricky but not exactly intuitive either. Easy once you know how.
Secondly today I had a look into rss feeds and how to get them into the sidebar via the rss widget (you can see them bottom right of the sidebar with the orange livefeed icon). It turns out to be relatively trivial as long as you know the feed url. The first test was to a friends site, Hermitage Place. WordPress blogs helpfully automatically post the feed at http://sitename.wordpress.com/feed. In the settings for the rss widget all you have to do is paste this string into the url field and specify the number of entries you want to display. A google search revealed the same code for google news. Piece of cake.

After further reading in the WordPress.com FAQ’s and forum there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to get the rss feeds to enter themselves as posts which would have been nice. RSS widgets only (at this stage).